Hydrodynamic and thermodynamic modelling of an oscillating water column device

Oscillating water column devices are an important class of wave energy converters which has been extensively studied due to its simplicity. An oscillating water column is made of a chamber opened at the bottom, and the air trapped inside the chamber above the inner surface of the water column drives an air-turbine. In this report, a complete mathematical model for an oscillating water column is described in detail. At first, the hydrodynamic interaction between the incident wave and the chamber wave elevation is considered, and then the thermodynamics of the chamber is presented in order to describe the pressure inside the chamber. In addition, a model of the air-turbine is presented which is used to describe the conversion of the pneumatic energy of air-flow into mechanical energy of the rotor of the turbine. Finally, a numerical case study of a full-scale oscillating water column is studied in detail.